The high cost of metrology, lack of consistent wafer-to-wafer or shot-to-shot (microlithography) metrology, and delays in metrology data feedback often results in unnecessary cost and waste, and lost productivity in semiconductor manufacturing due to factors such as non-optimal or low granularity process control and lack of optimized metrology strategies. Virtual metrology (VM) offers promise to address these problems as it is a less costly software solution, provides information with much less delay, and can be augmented and adjusted by actual metrology data as available. VM is a modeling and metrology prediction solution whereby equipment and process data, such as in-situ fault detection (FD) information, is related to post-process metrology data so that this same equipment and process data can be used to predict metrology information when actual metrology information is not available. However, conventional techniques for generating VM models are expensive. Additionally, typically considerable resources are spent in VM model development and integration before it can be determined whether a VM model will work properly.